Gove adds fuel to the fire

Whatever your view of this Thursday’s strike action, you would think this would be a time for cool heads. A tense situation needs careful handling yet, in piles the Education Secretary, urging parents to break the strike and take the place of teachers in the classroom.

This is dotty on so many levels. These parents would need to be supervised – so who would be free to do that? What exactly would they teach? What would happen, say, if there was an accident? Or a badly misbehaving pupil? Head Teachers and Governors would have a lot of explaining to do (and be without a leg to stand on) if something went wrong.

Aside from the practicalities, Gove is also sending the message that teaching is an amateurish pursuit which anyone can have a go at, and do to satisfactory standard at the drop of a hat. Causing offence and being provocative at such a time is a very peculiar tactic. The effect of such disrespect, rather than diffusing the situation, will be to rally more and more teachers to the union cause

More perniciously, Gove’s words seek to drive a wedge between the two most important people in a child’s learning and development: teacher and parent. Where there is trust, understanding and dialogue between teacher and parent, the child benefits.

Parents may – or may not – support the strike action. If they don’t, there is no reason why this relationship should collapse as a result; it should be strong enough and mature enough to withstand a difference of opinion.

But why should the Education Secretary decide to strain this relationship, to push it past breaking point, by saying it would be ‘great’ if parents, this Thursday, became strike-breakers.

When a dangerous fire is beginning to burn, Mr Gove, wouldn’t it be wise to dampen it down; to calmly put it out rather than adding more fuel?

Gove’s induction plan fails to excite

With a distinct lack of fanfare, Michael Gove has announced plans to shake-up the induction arrangements for new teachers.

Admittedly, not a story to compete with Kate and Wills. Even the spin maestro’s at Education HQ managed to generate a press release which was startling only its literalness: ‘Induction regulations for newly qualified teachers’, the headline reads. A job at Ronseal awaits for said press officer.

But enough sitting on the fence; let’s take a peek at the latest to emerge from Michael of Whitehall.

First reaction? It seems entirely reasonable to take a fresh look at this. It’s sensible housekeeping, if nothing else, to check such things as induction processes are functioning properly or, to use the jargon, ‘fit for purpose’.

My experience is that the induction process does the job in a fairly dry, unexciting, predictable way. In completing the ‘standards’ there’s ample opportunity for the teacher to focus on the specific requirements of the job, to ask for help, to observe, to practise, to learn, and to demonstrate competence; they provide focus for what can be a frantic first year. It gives the learning curve some kind of shape and form.

Equally, there is enough scope for a school to identify those who have scraped through teacher-training and who would actually be best suited doing something completely unlike teaching. Not to put to fine a point on it, at this stage, the wheat can be sifted from the chaff.

In terms of the detail of the current arrangements, there is a bit too much repetition and a bit too much ticking of boxes – although it’s not so bad that this hinders retention of good teachers, as Gove claims (without any reference or citation, as is often the case). Nevertheless, a trimming of the unnecessary bureaucracy is no bad thing.

But, and this is the key point, a significant trick will be missed if this becomes solely an exercise in paper reduction.

It will leave untouched the real point and focus of the introduction to such an important profession. That is, to begin the process of turning wide-eyed novice into a pedagogue of some excellence. To do this requires much more than just doing less, and much more enthusiasm than is evident in this drab announcement.

Where is the sense of possibility? Where is there anything clear or concrete about raising the teaching profession to new heights? Where is the ambition?

All we have is a wearisome quote from Nick Gibb which starts off aimless and, from there, fails to improve. The deficit, it seems, has truly left us impoverished.

Once again, when it comes to teacher development – the silver bullet of educational reform – Gove and his team reveal their timidity. On funding and on legislative reform the main man is bold and radical. Too bold and too radical, perhaps, but – whether you like them or not – there is no denying his policies in these areas are imbued with considerable energy.

Instead, we see scraps: disallowing graduates with third-class degrees from teaching; a troops-to-teachers programme and (admittedly a bit more substantial) plans for Teaching Schools. This is not to mention the mixing of messages which results in a raising of the entry level for teaching in a maintained school, yet for Free Schools, the removal of any requirements for a teaching qualification at all.

So far, for Michael Gove, when it comes to the most important cog in the educational wheel – improving the quality of teachers – he fails to excite. His imagination fails.

Watch out – there’s an Academy about!

Next time you hear a Government Minister mention, in serious tones, the words ‘deficit’ and ‘tough economic choices’ remember that, as a result of Michael Gove’s education policies, taxpayers will soon be helping out ridiculously wealthy parents by funding private school places – including the Maharishi School in Lancashire, where fees reach £5,000-£7,000 a year in exchange for a curriculum grounded in the study of transcendental meditation.

This surprising development comes courtesy of the much-maligned and increasingly dotty free schools policy, as independent schools apply for the new status and, critically, the public funding which follows it. No wonder free schools, the coalition’s flag-bearer for educational reform, are opposed by so many who see them as a drain on finite resources, with money flowing away from existing community schools and, in this case, towards those who can hardly be described as most in need.

But it could be, as Mike Baker argues here, that free schools are little more than a sideshow, a distraction from the real shift in school status: the headlong charge to Academy status.

It is hard to believe that the number of free schools will break three figures any time between now and the next election. Aside from the handful of existing independent schools that will convert, the sheer complexity of setting up a school from scratch will deter all but the brave or the bonkers (or both).

Given the attrition rates involved in such an endeavour, you would need thousands of interested parties in order to end up with any more than the odd school here and there – and there is no sign of such enthusiasm (partly because the coalition have completely distorted the demand for free schools – most parents find the idea of setting up their own school laughable).

Yet the same cannot be said for Academy schools, which are popping up all over the place as Heads rush to make the change and grab the extra cash on offer. Certainly, the incentives and the arm-twisting from the top is pushing in one direction only; what started as a drip is now becoming a torrent and, with only one in five school leaders ruling out conversion, it looks like Academy status will become the norm.

This is perhaps the real education story of the coalition’s first year in power: not the free school ‘movement’ (if it can be described as such a thing), with the ubiquitous Toby Young, the Lancastrian meditators and – brace yourself – the Birbalsingh experiment in Lambeth, but the seemingly relentless shoving of schools towards Academy status.

What is most striking about this change is not necessarily the virtues (or otherwise) of the policy itself, but, like so many of the coalition’s boldest reforms – think NHS – they are being carried out without any real sense of consent or agreement, let alone demand. Indeed, the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats made no mention of Academy schools, except to say that they will be expected to follow an ‘inclusive admissions policy’.

Alongside ‘deficit’ and ‘tough economic choices’, it’s best to add ‘free school’ to your list of words spoken by Ministers when they want to disguise some dastardly deed. Because, if Michael Gove has his way, while free schools take the flak and the fire, the local school near you will quietly, surreptitiously become an Academy school – whether you like it or not.

Ofsted: a tick-box exercise from a tick-box organisation

Our friends at Ofsted have recently published their revised plans for how they go about inspecting schools. And what an uninspiring read it is. Uninspiring, that is, if you hold the view that Ofsted has lost its way and is in need of a major shake-up, not just a tweak of focus here and there.

The tone of the document (which is out for consultation and can be found here) is less than radical. There is little – scratch that, no evidence of anything approaching a fundamental re-evaluation of what they do and why.

Instead, what we have is lots of self-congratulatory stuff about how Ofsted, through its inspections, has helped to ‘share good practice’ and ‘encourage improvement’ (not on my watch they haven’t!). And then a host of relatively minor changes which have been forced upon them by the Education Bill – such as an end to the duties to inspect community cohesion and well-being.

The proposal is cleverly written to recognise the political mood – presenting the case that inspections will be streamlined with any flabbiness removed from the process. But, it’s hard to see how this will be the case – next to nothing has been removed from the scope of inspections.

Achievement, behaviour, safety, leadership, management, teaching – it’s all there. As is a focus on spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. And, although the out-of-fashion term ‘personalised learning’ is absent, the inspection will still look at whether education enables a child to ‘achieve her or his potential’.

It’s very hard to see how this cuts down the inspection process, particularly as Ofsted will apparently now give ‘greater priority’ to ‘detailed observation of teaching and learning’ – this suggestions more than a mere drop in and scan through the books. The conflict remains too between historical data and where a school is ‘at’ when the inspector calls: despite the glib references to the importance of teaching, the inspections still seem to be focussed on the importance of SATs results.

Other changes are worth noting too – including the focus on reading and numeracy in primary schools and literacy in secondary schools. It’s not clear why these have been picked other than, y’know, reading is, like, important innit. What we do know is that these unexplained shifts by Ofsted affect what schools do in a fairly crude and unsophisticated way. You can hear the screech of brakes and jangled gear-change as the inspectors narrow their sights ever-further.

There is more for those who doubt Ofsted are under-taking little more than a superficial exercise in pretending to ‘focus’ their inspections, while leaving plenty in their armoury if they don’t like the cut of a schools jib. Get this: they will be coming to inspect ‘how gaps are narrowing between different groups of pupils’. Which groups are, of course, for them to know and us to find out. It could be FSM v non-FSM, or girls v boys, or white v BME, or EAL v non-EAL. Who knows? But sure as eggs is eggs, Ofsted will have something to string you up by.

Aside from the ‘spot the difference’ approach to the detail of inspections, what is missing is any consideration of the culture of inspections and the recognition that the inspection experience of some schools has been something along the lines of: drop-in, damn and depart. This, in my view, damages rather than enhances school improvement.

To counter this, Ofsted does need fundamental change. Some are proposing splitting the whole organisation in two - more cruel critics might recommend breaking it up further (a million very tiny pieces springs to mind).

What they have produced here is a tick-box exercise from a tick-box organisation; it provides little to suggest Ofsted is changing from within. It is curious that Michael Gove has been so cautious in this area (contrast for a moment with what Eric Pickles has done, smashing the local authority watchdog – the Audit Commission – to smithereens) when, for many in the education sector, it is the place where radical upheaval is urgently required.

Gove’s discipline plan fails to excite

There are few things more appealing to the right of the Tory Party than a bit of good old-fashioned discipline. Nothing whets the appetite like a bit of comprehensive school chaos, children running riot and feckless public servants losing control.

Into this fertile territory, steps Michael Gove – not quite whip in hand, but keen and stiff-backed – with his ‘new guidance‘ for tackling naughtiness in schools.

And what a hotch-potch it is. It’s more a series of random, disparate and occasionally dotty ideas – or a repetition of powers that already exist – than anything that could accurately be described as a ‘plan’.

So here we have, to much fanfare, the announcement that teachers can use reasonable force in the classroom. Splendid stuff, except this power exists already – nothing new. Same with powers to exclude pupils who make malicious allegations – nothing new.

Then there is the slightly bizarre proposal that, in cases of malicious allegation, the ‘default position’ is that the teacher has behaved reasonably ‘unless a complainant can show that a teacher has behaved unreasonably’. Read that a couple of times. Is that not a statement of the blindingly obvious – a re-iteration of ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Good to know – thanks Michael – but it’s very hard to see, beyond the headline, what concrete difference this makes to the school day.

Where the guidance is worthy of a press release, the ideas seem designed for the Daily Mail rather than for the classroom. How often, for example, will a power to prosecute children who make malicious allegations be applied? Never, would be my guess. Such a proposal fits the bill for a Secretary of State that wants to talk tough, but is destined to achieve next to nothing in the real world.

On exclusions, Gove is broadly incoherent – citing the number of kicked-out kids as evidence that schools are out of control, yet also urging Heads to take action (which suggests more exclusions, not less). Added to this morass is a new proposal to make schools accountable for the educational outcome of excluded pupils. How a Head should navigate all that is anyone’s guess.

The reality is that the new guidance is a muddled and modest affair, unremarkable and uninspiring. And it’s all stick and no carrot, but my guess is the spin machine at Education HQ will be quite pleased with this – what amounts to nothing more than a bureaucratic tidying up of fairly dry guidance has provided fodder for much talking tough. On closer inspection it seems this was all cooked up for the Telegraph, not for teachers.

Animal Farm and Brave New World should be on Gove’s reading list

There is something particularly odd about Michael Gove’s remark that children should be reading 50 books a year.

It’s not that he says this in the midst of a spending round so austere that libraries are being closed (one presumes perhaps that this challenge is reserved for children who have parents able to purchase said books).

It’s not that this comes from the man who, just weeks earlier, wanted to kick the Bookstart scheme into touch – and only toned down the cuts after a mighty fuss from some mightily-miffed children’s authors.

It’s not even that the idea is a bit daft. Why 50? Why not 52? Would 50 short stories count? Would War and Peace count as double? Negative marks for Mills and Boon?

And where’s the evidence – cited by Gove – that 80-90% of children only read one or two novels a year? It sounds made up – but incredibly handy if you want to give the impression state schools aren’t up to scratch.

This also continues the increasingly tiresome trend of importing innovation from the U.S. – this idea comes from Harlem – as if nothing of value is done closer to home. Never mind that there is a Summer Reading Challenge here – a national scheme – which aims to keep bookish minds occupied over the holidays. Why did Gove not mention this? One thing he should learn from the States is that they are very, very good at selling their successes.

But what’s really strange is that Gove said this at all. What on earth has it got to do with him whether children read 10, 20, 50 or 100 books? Why is a politician – a Secretary of State – concerning himself with such things?

More to the point, why is Gove sticking his oar in when he professes to believe in a political philosophy which is about a small state: an end to top-down interference and decision-making at the local level. One week it’s teachers who know best and it’s they that should be given the power to get on with things; the next we have an exercise in minutiae-management from the man at the top.

The problem is that this is becoming a habit for the Government; the desire to interfere based on their own personal prejudices. Gove has done it before with his views on what should – and shouldn’t – be taught in history lessons. And, we have had Nick Gibb babbling on about the tragic absence of Miss Havisham from the school curriculum (in his world it seems – on Planet Gibb – a single fictional character can genuinely save the world. He shares this view with the very small number of people who read Superman comics and believe them to be true).

This meddling is everywhere, and can take a malevolent form. Just take a look at the changes to funding to the Arts and Humanities Research Council – who are now duty bound to spend a ‘significant’ amount of its funding paying for research into the Government’s objectives and priorities. In other words, academic brains will be forced to add the words ‘big society’ to their research proposals in order to get the cash. This is a gross act, using £100m of public money to contort research to focus on a political slogan, and a pretty limp one at that.

This is unsettling coming from a Government that claims to believe in freedom of the individual: it looks very much like state control to me. Orwell and Huxley wrote of such things.

So, as an act of rebellion – symbolic if nothing else – let us take our copies of Great Expectations and hurl them in the fires, with the cry: “don’t tell us what to read posh-boy!” Then, get down from the barricades, and start off your very own 50 book challenge with some light reading: Animal Farm and Brave New World.

It’s the teaching, stupid

Why – I ask myself at infuriatingly regular intervals – in our chastened economic times, is Michael Gove spending money (and so much time) on such a speculative, long-odds, hit and hope punt as free schools?

Let us assume the focus of our endeavours, whether you are a political lefty or a righty or a don’t-give-a-monkeys, is on the question: what is the best, quickest and most sustainable way to improve children’s educational experiences and outcomes (bearing in mind, of course, UK PLC is a bit skint)?

Even if you are an avid supporter of free schools, someone who thinks the answer to the question is ‘a: Toby Young’ – or, conversely, if you are a determined opponent and think the answer to the question is ‘b: anyone but Toby Young’ – it is hard to justify the monstrous amount of political energy and will being expended battling for (or against) a policy which will result in the odd school here and there.

More importantly, this is a policy which in essence misses the most obvious response to the question.

Strip the school experience down to the barest of bare bones, and it is not, I’m afraid, the governance structure of a school that defines whether little Jonny has an educational career of impeccable quality and unremitting excellence. It is not whether the school is ‘free’ or whether it is maintained by the local authority, that cuts the mustard for Year 7 on a damp Friday afternoon.

What does, then?

As boring and as straightforward and as simple as it sounds: it’s teaching. Or, more accurately: teachers teaching well. The oft-repeated line that the quality of a school cannot exceed the quality of its teaching is the fundamental truth that should guide all policy-making. To misuse Bill Clinton’s campaign phrase: it’s the teaching, stupid.

In tough times, businesses look to their ‘cash cow’; the steady seller that keeps the tills ringing and profits healthy. They keep risks low, invest cautiously and look for reliable, predictable returns rather than taking a gamble. Unexciting, maybe, but in these times, reliable results are rightly judged to be more important than flamboyant failures.

So, why not – when each public utterance from our leaders contains the obligatory reference to deficit reduction and cuts, usually closely followed by the ‘difficult decisions’ said things entail – go for the easy win and invest our scarce pennies on teachers?

At the risk of being accused of blatant self-interest and self-promotion, the science backs this up: John Hattie’s remarkable analysis of educational research (‘Visible Learning’ – unfortunately not in a good bookshop near you) picks out the interventions that make the most difference to learning. Handily (Mr. Hattie is very helpful), these interventions are listed at the back of the book; of the ‘top thirty’, nineteen are directly related to teachers or teaching methods (and many of the other eleven are directly related to teaching skills too – such as behaviour in the school).

And, critically, it takes a long look down the list to find evidence of the impact of structural reforms of the kind being supported here – religious schools and charter schools (the U.S equivalent of our free schools) are both outside the top hundred.

So, what to do? Attracting new and better recruits into the profession is vital; tomorrow’s teachers should ideally be better than the current bunch.

But what of today’s teachers? How can they improve what they do? On this, from Government at least, so little seems to be said (aside from the title of the White Paper, ‘The Importance of Teaching’ – an attempt at flattery which fails to disguise the paucity of ideas within). If only the effort and the energy currently absorbed in establishing new free schools could be diverted towards the development of teachers.

Whatever cash we have – and whatever political will there is – would be most wisely invested in this area, not the unproven risk of free schools. I don’t mean more pay – I mean investment in the best training and development there is. Here’s a start: every teacher should be trained to Masters degree level, based on research and development which takes place in their own classrooms.

There will be few headlines, favourable or otherwise, to such a move. In fact, it would be very likely to send the dispassionate observer into a deep sleep – and perhaps that reveals why it seems so low down the political agenda.

Indeed at the end of a Parliamentary term there would be no new buildings, no Acts of Parliament – nothing to show for it, except a few thousand teachers who were better at their jobs, and many, many thousands of children whose prospects had been elevated and whose eyes had been lifted to see previously unimaginable horizons.

A Gove poem

If I were the man that had to decide,
from the list right at my side,
the lucky schools that shall be built,
I would make the call with a certain guilt.

If I were the man that had to pick,
who would gain that cherished brick,
my hopes would be for those who won,
my thoughts with those whose dreams undone.

If I were the man who was told,
my decision had been way too bold,
my eyes would droop and my head would drop,
for a moment or two my heart would stop.

If I were the man who had heard,
an abuse of power had occurred,
I would not say I was delighted,
get wobbly kneed and over-excited.

If I were the man who had read,
that ‘Unlawful’ was what the judge had said,
I would not jump around with glee,
but check the mirror – not like what I see.

If I were Gove – the man at the top,
my decision would be to make it stop,
knowing that this mess was mine,
I’d write ‘Dear David’ and then resign.

How abusing power can raise the spirits

Today, the High Court said Michael Gove’s decision to scrap the Building Schools for the Future programme was unlawful and an ‘abuse of power’.

A bad day, you would think: one which must have knocked the Education Secretary’s confidence?

It seems not. In fact, this ruling seems to have perked him up no end.

The response from Gove and his publicists at the Department of Education is strident to say the least, bristling with energy and indignation.

More than this, his choice of words reveals an air of celebration, which doesn’t entirely chime with the message from the High Court (not least the subject matter; whatever your position, this is about schools not being built).

Sounding like a football manager who looks for the positives after a defeat to nil a long way from home, he says: “I am delighted that the Judge has ruled in my favour”. To go with his peculiar interpretation of making a decision that was deemed to be both unlawful and an abuse of power, Gove chooses to add an unpleasant whiff of eau-de-gloat, picking out the following for our delectation: “…no-one should gain false hope from this decision.”

And here I was thinking that charm was supposed to be Gove’s defining characteristic.

Yet his words today are absent of anything approaching good grace. Did he really want to create the impression that this was some kind of ringing endorsement for the way he has gone about his business?

Take his statement on face value: imagine, if you can, the boy Gove high-fiving his inner circle, bumping fists with his legal team. Maybe, as we speak, he’s lining up the Sambuca’s for his press officers (or, depending on when you read this, staring regretfully at a fry-up). Feel the bile, the nausea, rise in your stomach.

Is this really a time for celebration: can a ruling on such a subject warrant a reaction of this kind?

His words, released soon after the judgement, contain no attempt to acknowledge that this legal action was sincerely taken, by people who had worked long and hard to secure new funding for a school on their patch and by people who were profoundly disappointed, upset even, when the funding rug was pulled from under their feet.

Even if we accept Gove’s argument that the programme was bureaucratic and long-winded, it is distasteful to so keenly rub the noses of those who actually managed to navigate the process and have merely had the audacity to challenge his judgement using fair, democratic and lawful means.

It is remarkable, too, how easily Gove dismisses the Judge’s view that he took little notice of his ‘equalities responsibilities’ when making his decision, as if a criticism like this is mere dust on the anointed one’s shoulder, to be flicked to the floor. I thought he cared deeply about equalities? He has said so often how miffed he is that poor kids do less well than rich kids. Yet, when taken to task on how distant his policies are from his rhetoric, the shoulders shrug; he appears not to give a hoot.

There is no doubt in my mind he will reach the same decision when these projects are next put before his eyes. Like a latter-day Roman Emperor, keen amidst the blood-letting to demonstrate his humanity, he may allow one or two to survive and run free. But how damning of the man that, it seems – if we are to judge his words today – he looks forward to the moment without any regret or modesty. He awaits the final kill with a glint in his eye. His thumb, already outstretched, is pointing to the ground.

Gove’s ‘Free School’ dossier is bad science

I’m a big fan of Ben Goldacre, the journalist who sniffs out ‘bad science‘ and exposes the way research is misused to justify ridiculous claims. He should take a look at Michael Gove’s dodgy dossier which sets out the case Free Schools. Buried right down the bottom of the page, after the press release, is the Department for Education’s interestingly titled ‘myth-buster‘ on Free Schools. It’s an unusual mix of hand-picked international comparisons, the Department’s own statistics, apparently solid research and some seriously questionable evidence.

Unfortunately what first grabs the eye is the sheer inconsistency of font (and font size) – it’s worth reading for this alone. How did such a sloppy document – on a subject so important – make it into the public domain? It suggests this document was chucked together with some haste – a blur of Googling and cutting and pasting – by a bureaucrat with only rudimentary computing skills: Times New Roman here, Arial there, a touch of size 12, then a smidge of 13. (It’s ironic that funds from the school technology budget are being diverted to pay for the ‘free schools’, perhaps they could be best spent showing our friends at the DfE how to use Word. If a student in my class had done this, I would have done my ‘teacher-frown’ and asked him to go and do it properly. We have standards, you see. Or maybe it’s an act of sabotage by an anti-free school pen-pusher – perhaps we should be grateful).

On the substance, the document does a remarkable job of conflating ‘Academy School’ with ‘Free School’, to the point where the two different school structures are apparently interchangeable. It does the same for ‘Charter School’ – the autonomous schools in the U.S. – and the U.K version of ‘Free School’ (there are of course similarities but international comparisons should be heavily qualified and, in this document, they are not).

This conflation allows the DfE to claim that ‘Free schools are in demand’ because a) Charter Schools in the U.S. are over-subscribed, b) On average there are 2.6 applications a day for Academy status (in the U.K.) and, c) Polling by the Confederation of Swedish Business found that Swedish parents scored free schools more highly than their public equivalents (this last one, incidentally, comes from a ‘Policy Exchange’ report – a right-wing think tank). Is it just me or does that fail to convince?

Elsewhere in the document, a positive report by the National Audit Office into attendance at Academy schools results in a claim that ‘Free Schools improve discipline‘; statistics which show there are more ‘free school meal children’ in Academy schools are used to ‘debunk’ the myth that ‘Free Schools will only benefit the well-off’; we are reassured that ‘Free Schools‘ won’t neglect SEN pupils because Academies have a higher proportion of SEN children than the national average.

One, two, all or none of these findings may be meaningful in some other context, but one things for certain: they do not make the case, as DfE is seeking to do, that ‘free schools are in demand/improve behaviour/improve attendance’. It is simply not possible to say the introduction of one variable (an Academy school, or a Charter School in a different country) will result in the same effects when an different variable is applied (a Free School). This is pretty shoddy stuff for such a weighty topic. Imagine a new medical intervention being introduced based on such an amateurish, convoluted evidence base.

Throughout, selective data from the U.S. is used to ‘prove’ that free schools in the UK will be a force for public good, as if our social, cultural and economic contexts are identical. Ignoring the research into education published by RAND (best known for military research and the nuclear strategy, known fittingly as MAD: mutually assured destruction), here’s just one example of why this is not the case:

I took a look at one of the research documents cited. This one was put together by a team including staff from Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. The methodology seemed sound, it was well-written and claims were cautiously made; I have no complaints about the research.

But when the researchers set out what distinguished Charter Schools from their public school equivalents they found the former were effective because: they required students to wear a school uniform; students took on average two ‘evaluations’ each year to track student progress; parents of students in Charter Schools sign a ‘parent contract’; teachers get paid for taking on additional duties.

This, they claim, contrasts them with public schools and hence raises standards.

What’s the problem? Well, based on a sample of one (my school): we have a school uniform; our pupils take three (not two) internal evaluations each year; parents sign a ‘parent contract’; and teachers get paid for taking on additional responsibilities. Moreover, this is common practice in schools in the UK. So, in these cases, Charter Schools have fixed a problem that simply does not exist in the UK.

This does leave the other distinctive features of Charter Schools: longer school hours and a longer school week; and performance pay for teachers. That’s the nub of the issue: train more teachers so schools can provide a longer day and pay teachers well when they are successful. This should be focus for the debate, the main attraction: more quality teacher time for children.

Free schools are a side-show. If they want to persuade us otherwise, the message for the Department for Education is: must try harder.